Comic Relief appointed Blue State in 2023 on their mission to find a digital agency that could build more agility and testing into their supporter acquisition and income model.
One of the biggest considerations when helping to raise awareness and income for Comic Relief is that they are not a single issue cause. They work with partners to fund projects that support people facing poverty and injustices in the UK and around the world.
Campaign strategy
The campaign had multiple objectives to consider (donating to the campaign, signing up to become a regular giver, purchasing merchandise and fundraising on behalf of the organisation) with a primary objective to drive overall income.
Learnings and insights helped build the overall strategy. We knew from previous campaigns that Meta was the most effective channel at driving fundraising registration sign ups, whilst paid search was pivotal at generating income on the night of broadcast.
Segmenting audiences
Audiences were built using historic learnings and insights from previous years and segmented based on the action we wanted them to take. Our targeting was broad initially, made up of individuals who were charitable and seeking to make a positive contribution to society.
We then applied lenses into our targeting and content to maximize conversions. For fundraising registrations we focused on schools (including nurseries, primary schools & secondary schools), families, workplaces and community groups (such as choirs).
For brand awareness, shop and donate activity, we worked with interest based insights to reach new audiences. We also used data lists to create lookalike audiences of individuals who have previously engaged with Comic Relief.
Creative was developed for different audiences and provided by the Comic Relief team. Where we saw strong performance from content, we repurposed it across audiences and asks – we found brand awareness to be a strong driver of shop purchases.
A holistic fundraising approach
We took a holistic approach to fundraising which we believe is what contributed to campaign success.
For instance whilst we didn’t see an immediate return on programmatic display, when we switched on display activity we saw a huge increase in searches and, subsequently, donations via Google Grant and paid search. We found channels were supporting each other with cross conversions happening across strands of activity e.g. donations driving sign ups and brand activity driving shop conversions.
For the first time this year we tested a regular giving ask with the newly developed ‘Not just a one night stand’ proposition offering audiences another way to support the organisation year-round.
Exceeding income targets
The campaign had a media budget of £438,000 allocated across all funnels (awareness, consideration and action).
Search proved to be the most effective in driving end donations whilst Meta turned out to be the most impactful channel when it came to recruiting fundraisers.
On the night of broadcast, we saw a spike in awareness and donations through ads, mainly search with income reaching over £1M on the day with ROAS reaching a peak of 12.5. Overall the campaign generated 8,166 schools fundraising sign ups, 4,685 workplace sign ups, 240 new regular givers and over 1.5M of total income exceeding all targets.
We’re delighted by the results of this year’s Red Nose Day digital campaign. The strategic insights and optimisations our partnership with Blue State provided, from campaign brief through to end delivery, were invaluable in its success. The income raised will help us fund more projects supporting people facing poverty and injustice. We’re excited to continue working with Blue State throughout the summer across our Sport Relief campaign and look forward to seeing the results!
